The Concept of Education in the Second Generation of Vitae and Portraits of Vittorino da Feltre

Abstract

This chapter uses Sassolo da Prato’s concept of education as a starting point for discussing the alterations that appeared in the second generation of vitae and portraits of Vittorino da Feltre. These texts present slightly different versions of Vittorino; an obvious question is whether these changes were the result of philosophical developments taking place in fifteenth-century Italy. Renaissance Florence was a city in philosophical ferment; in addition to the unabated assimilation of the writings of Aristotle, the larger schools of philosophical thought from antiquity were being consciously adopted and brought into line, more or less, with the Christian context, as, for example, happened with neo-Platonism. The embedding of philosophy in theology, a tradition that was primarily carried forward by university institutions and that had its obverse in the dogmatic church philosophy of the theologians, was ended by the advance of the studia humanitatis and the resulting secular philosophy. Here we should note that there were changes within the church which led to changes in thinking about mankind and his relation to the world. These included the observance movements of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, led by Bernardino of Siena and Antoninus of Florence; the humanist writings of Ambrogio Traversari and Pius II, the observations on nature by Nicholas of Cusa; and finally the adoption of Greek scholarship transmitted through the Eastern Church.